Metal-detection romance The Magnificent Trufflepigs hikes onto Steam next week

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture lead designer Andrew Crawshaw is returning to the pastoral English countryside next month with The Magnificent Trufflepigs.

Coming to Steam on June 3rd (and Epic some time later), Trufflepigs is a laid-back first-person romance debut debut for Crawshaw's new studio, Thunkd. Like a cosy Sunday drama, the game follows leading man Adam as he returns to his hometown and helps his childhood friend Beth hunt down a long-lost treasure.

What this means is you'll be doing plenty of metal detecting, "meditatively exploring" the fields with your big metal detecting stick to discover and dig up a whole lotta trash (and the occasional treasure). In a nod to Firewatch, you'll be whiling away the hours chatting to Beth on your walkie-talkie, sending her pics of the occasional find.

It all sounds profoundly twee, but the game's store page threatens to uncover cracks in Beth and Adam's perfect summer. In classic Hallmark movie fashion, there's a big firm ready to tear down the farm, though it also appears Beth may have buried more than just missing jewellery.

"The Magnificent Trufflepigs is a game about trying to find something, and the tone it sets is like a typical English summer: mostly pleasant, but with stormy moments that threaten to ruin everything."

I suppose it's for the best Crawshaw wasn't gunning for a Scottish summer, really. Grim times all around up here.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.